The Jericho Road

or all societies that reach down after and raise up a fallen brother, and if possible make him wiser, better and happier. Should a like courtesy be extended to this order, while it would certainly constitute a new departure, it would prove none the less gratifying. But, from certain sources, the order has been the recipient of a peculiar kind of consideration, so long that "the memory of man scarce runneth to the contrary." Inflamed appeals and bristling denunciations have gone out against it, "while great, swelling words"--swollen with hatred, bigotry, prejudice and superstition--have assailed it relentlessly and almost uninterruptedly. Mainly, these assaults have been met with the terse and pointed invocation, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do."

That this great and potent brotherhood may not, in all its parts and jurisdictions, have so deported itself, and so carried forward its work, as to be justly free from unfavorable criticism and merited censure, is probably true. As with organi